


Repent At Leisure

by rain_sleet_snow



Series: Animal Instinct [2]
Category: Primeval
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-02-08
Updated: 2011-02-08
Packaged: 2018-03-11 05:26:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,514
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3315848
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rain_sleet_snow/pseuds/rain_sleet_snow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Liz deals with the fallout of her actions. Lyle deals with Liz. Neither very much enjoys the experience.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Repent At Leisure

**Author's Note:**

> Longer fic set within kez’s Animal Instinct ’verse. Thanks to her for letting me play with it! Readers with terrifyingly efficient memories will recognise this as AU-ified If You Go Down To The Woods Today. Follows on from The Missing Link.

            The men got a shock, when they saw the last deinonychus and the children it had hunted. Firstly, the deinonychus was very dead; and secondly, the children were not all children. Three, including one injured boy, were human and perfectly normal, if clearly in shock. One more was a cheetah, wearing a loose pale blue collar that Lyle recognised as the standard design a lot of people who often transformed wore while transformed in order to prevent unpleasant accidents: Lyle presumed they had transformed in order to fetch the recently-arrived help in the form of police and paramedics that surrounded the children. The fifth was a greater shock still: transformed into an iron-grey, rather ruffled wolf, they were spattered with blood, their muzzle soaked, and probably responsible for the very dead deinonychus. Lyle wondered irritably why no-one had got the poor kid to transform back again and wash the blood out of their mouth.

 

            The young wolf whined, shifting its weight on its paws, and the cheetah, sitting neatly upright with its long tail curled around it, cheeped. Lyle supposed this was meant to be reassuring, and glanced over the other three children as the boy was loaded into an ambulance. Only one was a girl, pretty and sensitive-looking with coppery-brown skin and a thick rope of soft black hair, and Lyle decided that she was unlikely to be Lester’s missing daughter, if only on the basis that no child of Sir James Lester could possibly be the slightest bit sensitive. That left the cheetah or the wolf. In a spirit of eliminating all possibilities, Lyle waved Ditzy, Blade, Kermit and Finn forward to take custody of the dead dinosaur and tramped over to the cheetah.

 

            “May I?” he asked politely, ignoring the (for the moment) civilised argument Ditzy was having with the policemen and gesturing at the collar. The cheetah tilted up her small elegant head, and Lyle craned his neck to read the inscription on the small bronze circle: JULIET SAYERS. Definitely not Lester’s daughter, then- but Lester hadn’t _mentioned_ that his daughter could transform when he had said she was in the area and her Duke of Edinburgh group had gone off the radar, and it would have been usual to mention it, just so that the soldiers knew whether to keep an eye out for a teenaged girl or a – or a marmoset, or whatever. Wolf, in this case. Lyle realised that he had turned, and was staring at the wolf, who was looking back at him through yellow eyes.

 

            “Liz Lester?” he said, hoping he was wrong and the poor kid hadn’t had the shock of transforming for the first time compounded by the shock of killing something while in animal form. Lyle wasn’t an active himself, but Ryan was, and had killed the first time he’d transformed; according to him (halfway down a tower of villainous shots) it was a shattering experience, and Lyle was the last one to wish something like that on a fourteen-year-old girl.

 

            The wolf nodded, whimpered, and pawed at its muzzle. Lyle was suddenly absolutely furious, and wheeled sharply, taking the policeman’s presence at his elbow for granted and nipping a tirade in the bud by demanding: “Did nobody think to give that kid a bowl of _water_?”

 

            “You mean the wolf?” the policeman enquired, too taken aback to start his own rant about squaddies who thought they owned the world and felt  free to disrupt the due process of the law. He looked well into his forties, and it occurred to Lyle that he might have gone to school before Transformation Classes were mandatory, and might not have the faintest clue what had happened.

 

            “I mean,” Lyle snapped, “the _child_ , who’s just transformed for the first time in her own defence and found herself _killing_ something!”

 

            “One of the constables can do something for her,” the policeman said dismissively.

 

            “Can they? Great. Go and tell them to.” Lyle turned his back on the policeman, ignoring the way the man began to sputter at being ignored, and crouched down next to the girl- the wolf- Lester’s daughter. “Your dad said you’d gone missing. He’ll be glad to know you’re safe. Someone’ll bring you some water in a minute, and you can get the blood out of your mouth.” Lester’s daughter looked grateful, insofar as a wolf can. “Do you want to transform back? Do you know how?”

 

            Lester’s daughter nodded, and suddenly looked eager as a very young constable with mousy hair brought her a metal bowl of water. The wolf-teenager slurped it up happily and spat it out again, and then started to lick herself clean with a finicking thoroughness that was more like a cat than a wolf. Lyle noted with approval that the constable had brought a thick plaid blanket as well. For reasons probably best known to the constable, it smelt strongly of horse.        

 

            “DCI Tait’s a bit of a stick in the mud,” the constable said apologetically, half to Lyle, half to Liz, who gave the wolfish equivalent of a grin. “I don’t think there’s one active in his whole circle of friends and family. Even down the station, there’s only ever been one before.”

 

            When Liz had finished drinking and cleaning herself, the constable asked her which of the Duke of Edinburgh packs was hers and fetched clean clothes from the one Liz pointed out, before putting them on a dry, unbloodied patch of ground and holding up the blanket. Seconds later, there was a white-faced girl with messy dark hair, a few freckles, and shocked brown eyes where there had been a medium-sized young wolf, and mere moments after that Liz emerged from behind the blanket fully dressed, if barefoot. She thanked the constable, and came over to Lyle, picking her way carefully, and Juliet Sayers the cheetah took her place behind the blanket, replacing an elegant, if small, cheetah with an equally pint-sized and rather more ruffled blonde girl.

 

            “Um,” Liz said awkwardly. “Thanks. I don’t know who you are.”

 

            “Lyle,” he said, and saluted, almost, but not quite, as a joke. He was surprised to see her almost respond. “Lieutenant Lyle.”

 

            “Er. Well, thanks, lieutenant.” Liz stared at her feet, pale, squelching in the mud and much too large for her body, which suggested that she had a considerable amount of growing left to do. The wind was cold, and she was in only a t-shirt and jeans; Juliet-the-cheetah, who now came skittering up with a bright smile shared impartially among Liz and the soldiers, was in much the same situation, but she, unlike Liz, was letting her teeth chatter and rubbing her arms to warm them up.

 

            “Brrr! It’s _cold_. You did really well, Liz.”

 

            “I can still taste blood,” Liz said flatly, looking down a small but pointed nose at Juliet’s cheerfulness, and Lyle got a glimpse of a Liz who wasn’t shocked into half-sentences and showing embarrassment.

 

            Juliet nudged her gently with a shoulder. “Yeah, but it’s better you ripped its throat out than it ripped Mark’s throat out!”

 

            Liz gave her a glacial and slightly nauseous stare, marched away behind a bush, and was loudly sick. 

 

            “Oops,” said Juliet, guiltily.

 

            “You don’t say,” Lyle drawled, and got a blast of static in his ear, swiftly followed by the arrival of two anomaly project jeeps.

 

            “I’d better- uh,” Juliet said, waving one small hand in Liz’s general direction.

 

            “Do what you want,” Lyle said. “Just don’t wander off and get eaten. That tends to reflect badly on us.”

 

            “I’ll try,” Juliet said, and rummaged through her abandoned rucksack until she came to a water bottle, which she took off in Liz’s direction. Lyle shook his head, and went to head off Cutter, who had just jumped out of the first jeep and was scowling thunderously at the dead deinonychus.

 

            “I told you not to kill it!” he snapped, thereby exhibiting a gift for leaping to conclusions honed by years of cut-throat academic politics.

 

            “I didn’t,” Lyle said, controlling his irritation. “Some poor kid who happened to be in its way happened to have a wolf form, which she changed into. She killed it.”

 

            Ryan, sticking to Cutter like very patient glue as usual, winced. Lyle transferred his attention to his friend. “It was Liz Lester.”

 

            Ryan’s sandy eyebrows shot up. “ _She_ killed it?”

 

            Lyle nodded confirmation. “She’s being sick behind a bush right now.”

 

            Cutter, who had shut up momentarily, piped up again. “I don’t blame her.” He wandered off to examine the corpse, followed swiftly by Temple, who shared a grin with Blade before saying something genius-level and totally incomprehensible about claw function in theropods. Lyle and Ryan rolled their eyes at each other.

 

            “Get Miss Brown to pass on that the girl’s safe,” Ryan ordered. “Lester’s having kittens. Bit more quietly than usual, but I don’t fancy him actually turning up here much, and he will the way he’s going.”

 

            Lyle nodded, spotted the inestimable Miss Brown climbing out of the second jeep, and went to deliver the glad tidings. As he went, a fragment of conversation drifted over from behind the bush.

 

            “It could be worse, Liz.”

 

            “Enlighten me.”

 

            “Well, you know what I did the first time I transformed? I was seven.”

 

            A heavy sigh. “Pass the water. What did you do? I’m all agog.”

 

            “Agog?”  


            A noise of water being spat out. “It means ‘stop asking bloody stupid questions and tell me’.”

 

            “I bit my father. A little bit. On the calf.” A small pause. “He totally deserved it.”

 

            A larger pause. “Juliet?”

 

            “What?”

 

            “It’s not helping.”

 

***

 

            There was an awkward silence at the table, which was broken when a car swept up to the hastily-commandeered pub and disgorged Sir James Lester. Liz Lester abruptly dropped her glass, shot to her feet, and ran barefooted out onto the gravel with a yell of “Dad!”, disappearing into her father’s arms and hanging from his neck, face pressed into his chest, for several long moments before dropping back to ground level, wiping away something that could have been tears.

 

            “Awww,” Juliet said, neatly catching the general mood. “Aren’t they _sweet_?”

 

            Lyle agreed, but added the mental rider that – however sweetly affectionate they looked now – the pair of them would be absolute hell on wheels to deal with simultaneously. He had no chance to impart this observation to the others, because the small family immediately came inside, and every single member of the anomaly project who wanted to eavesdrop on the reunion instantly pretended to be doing something productive; Abby started to tidy up her notes on the physiology of theropods with reference to the dead deinonychus and handy muscles and veins for darting, Connor vanished into his computer, and Claudia began to discuss the bill with the landlord, who wasn’t exactly cross that a bunch of people had suddenly displaced his regulars, since they were all in need of food, drink and (in one or two cases) the use of the showers in the bed-and-breakfast section of the pub, but nonetheless had to be paid at some point. Lyle was also rendered completely incapable of proper thought by the shock brought on when Lester produced the first human-looking expression Lyle had seen on the man’s face and handed out indiscriminate congratulations on the recovery of the five children hunted by the deinonychus, and particular thanks for his daughter’s rescue.

 

            Cutter, unusually reasonably, pointed out that Liz had done much of the rescuing herself. Liz wrinkled her nose and shook her head decisively, without bothering to actually speak to contradict him; she seemed untalkative and shy, although Juliet – much prettier, much more gregarious and determined to cheer Liz up – had drawn a few bad-tempered, fulsome sentences from her that suggested she was normally far more confident and less timid. Lester looked down at her, and raised an eyebrow; Liz looked up, and after a momentary struggle, raised an identical one. There was a staring contest. Lyle automatically started calculating odds on the outcome.

 

            Cutter cleared his throat, and ordered the pair of them, in a tone bordering on the irritated, to sit down, which got him a pointed and disturbingly identical stare from two pairs of eyes. Lyle couldn’t help remembering that not more than two hours ago, one of those pairs of eyes had belonged to a wolf; it was to Cutter’s credit, or possibly just a testimony to the man’s pig-headedness, that he seemed hardly to notice the stare. Lester sat down, pointedly at a different table to Cutter, and Liz joined him after another moment of eyeballing: Juliet heaved a sigh, and transplanted herself to the same table, sitting on one of the cushioned bench seats and complaining to Liz that she was cold. Since neither Lester appeared to be prepared to abandon their point or their table, Ryan and Lyle swapped tables as well, leaving Stephen Hart looking amused and a muscle under Cutter’s eye twitching.

 

            A concerted interrogation had already begun, although Liz was resisting vigorously and trying to question her father in turn about how he’d known about the deinonychus – she persisted in referring to it as ‘dino-knickerless’, possibly just to see Juliet try not to snort with laughter and Cutter’s expression turn more and more sour. Lyle tuned out the argument, although the bored look in Ryan’s watchful eyes suggested that he was actually listening to it and not finding it edifying. Lyle himself came down to earth with a sharp bump when Liz leaned over and snapped her fingers by his ear: “I _said_ , d’you want anything to eat?”

 

            Lyle declined hastily and gathered that Lester was in the process of ordering a meal for both girls, and that Liz, possibly in a spirit of general kindness, possibly because politeness demanded it, and most likely out of a wish to needle her father, had extended it to Ryan and Lyle. Lyle admired her strategy, and noted that, although Juliet chose a healthy portion of ham, egg and chips, Liz quite deliberately picked the vegetarian option. From the slight frown on Lester’s face, Lyle knew that he’d seen it too, but he covered it well, ordering coffee for himself and the other two men, hot chocolate for Juliet, and Coke for his daughter, precipitating another small argument about the healthy properties of Coca-Cola. Liz appeared to be basing her argument on the sugar content being good for shock, while Lester was making blistering predictions about what it would do to her teeth; still...

 

            Liz disappeared bad-temperedly behind a menu, leaving Ryan to catch Lyle’s eye and hold his gaze. Lyle could see his friend putting together pieces of a puzzle; the fact that Liz, when she had returned from a long shower, had been pink with scrubbing and smelling strongly of lemon showergel; the way she refused warm drinks, and now the fact that she wouldn’t eat meat... all little things, which could just mean that Liz really believed in cleanliness, didn’t want a hot drink, and had a natural tendency towards vegetarianism, but could also indicate that killing a living creature had discomfited her more than she was prepared to admit.

 

            A slight movement drew their attention to Lester, who looked as composed and judgemental as ever. He deliberately flicked his eyes towards his oblivious daughter, and arched an eyebrow at them. Ryan lifted his hands slightly, and Lyle shrugged almost imperceptibly. _Who knows?_

 

            “Knock it off,” Liz said, lowering the menu. She seemed to be reading the historical spiel at the front, which included a highly coloured account of the ghost to be found in one of the back bedrooms.

 

            “Excuse me?” her father said, with an edge of frost.

 

            “You’re up to something,” Liz accused, accurately. “Stop it.”

 

            “Insinuations,” Lester said distastefully.

 

            “Correct insinuations,” Liz said. The suspicion in her voice could have coated wrought iron, but happily, the meals arrived only moments after she’d spoken, and Liz turned her attention abruptly to a massive plate of upmarket macaroni cheese.

 

            She didn’t speak for the rest of the meal, giving her father leisure to grill Ryan and Lyle at length about the pack of deinonychus, and most particularly how one of the pack had escaped to panic everyone concerned by almost eating five teenagers. Both girls did a good impression of being deaf and dumb, impressing Lyle more than he cared to admit; they only interrupted proceedings once, when Juliet gave a piercing yelp. “ _Liz_! You’ve got your own dinner, leave mine alone!”

 

            Liz looked up at Juliet through dark eyelashes with an innocent expression that would have been more convincing if she hadn’t had a chip hanging out of the corner of her mouth, which she quickly swallowed, ignoring the warning look her father gave her. Lyle, who reckoned Liz had had at least three chips off Juliet’s plate before the other girl noticed, awarded a mark for insouciance.

 

            When both plates were so clean it looked like both girls might have taken the polish off, Liz waited for hers to be taken away, sipped her Coke meditatively, chewing the plastic straw, accepted the offer of a dessert menu and then ordered the special, which happened to be apple pie. The interrogation on the deinonychus had stopped long ago, and the silence was charged; Liz would not look directly at her father, and had tucked her feet up onto the seat. She now brought them up so that she could rest her chin on her knees, and Lyle saw Juliet shift restlessly, aware that at least one Lester was about to force the issue.

 

            Liz spoke suddenly, breaking both the tension and the silence, and it was hard to know which of her listeners she spoke to. “Amandeep’s afraid of me.”

 

            Lester arched an eyebrow. “How did you reach this interesting conclusion?”

 

            Liz sucked harder on the straw and looked hard at the table. Juliet was stiff and still, the only thing moving about her her eyes. “I saw. When she got into the ambulance with Mark and Ed – and before. She flinched away from me. So did Mark and Ed.”

 

            “Amandeep’s not much on brains,” Juliet pointed out uncharitably, unfreezing and playing with a salt shaker.

 

            “Mark and Ed are.”

 

            “Mark was sick. Ed’s impressionable, mostly, except when he feels he’s been cheated.” Juliet shrugged and slurped up the last of her hot chocolate. “Express one opinion, then express another, then ask him for his judgement, and watch him tie himself in knots trying to work out which one you want to hear.”

 

            Liz gave her a mildly alarmed look. “I’m meant to be the school bully, not you.”

 

            Juliet gave her a toothy grin, and sidestepped the question of her harmlessness. “Ha ha. Playground squabbles. Don’t think I haven’t noticed that you haven’t laid a finger on anyone in years, and that it wasn’t anyone who hadn’t been picking on someone else first. You just _look_ terrifying.”

 

            “Thank you very much,” Liz said crossly. “But that’s the _point_ , you see? And that was when I was just... me. Now I can rip throats out. People are going to be scared of me.”

 

            Juliet stole Liz’s Coke and took a healthy gulp before giving it back, tucking her feet up onto the seat and reminding Lyle abruptly of how elegant she’d been in cheetah form, like a highly-trained dancer holding a pose. “You mean, er, even more than they already are?”

 

            “Before,” Liz said, “I had friends who weren’t afraid of me.”  


            “I know,” Juliet said. “I am one.”

 

            “Are you?” Liz said crushingly, making Lyle wonder if she’d _needed_ to hit anyone to get a reputation as the school monster.

 

            “Yup,” Juliet answered, beaming.

 

            Liz rolled her eyes so hard they threatened to fall out of her head, developing a pronounced likeness to her father.

 

            “It won’t matter,” Juliet comforted her, digging into a portion of treacle tart. “You’ll see. Eat your apple pie.”

           

            “Huh,” Liz said, and looked at her apple pie, doused liberally in cinnamon and icing sugar, and then up at her father, who met her eyes and smiled at her.

 

            “I’m proud of you,” Lester said, so softly that probably only Ryan, Lyle and Juliet heard him, and ruffled her slowly-drying hair gently: Liz leaned into the gesture, and then ducked out of it quickly, as if embarrassed to be showing affection, after which she picked up a spoon, eyed the apple pie, considering a plan of attack, chin still propped on her knees. “... Elizabeth, you unmitigated heathen: take your feet _off_ your chair!”

 

            She’d probably be all right in the long run, Lyle decided, finding something less private to look at. She had friends and a loving family, obviously. But he hoped he never made an enemy of her- if he did, he suspected there’d be something waiting for him in the shadows one dark night, and Liz Lester didn’t seem like a girl you could cross and live to tell the tale, whether she was in wolf _or_ human form.


End file.
